Using someone elses wireless...

Ive been without internet access for the last few weeks for reasons i dont understand but im now away from home in a town. I turned on me laptop yesterday to look at some pics and it picked up 8 separate networks,2 of which were unsecured. Im now using it untill i sort out my own,is this illegal?
Merry Christmas one and all...

However, if you're sat at home using someone elses connection it's very unlikely you would get caught / prosecuted as it would be very difficult to prove you had intentionally connected to someone elses connection

Wireless is completely fine to use for domestic purposes as long as you secure the router appropriately:-

1. Change the default admin password on the router.
2. Enable MAC address filtering, so only your machine(s) can communicate with the router.
3. Disable SSID broadcasting on the router.
4. Enable WPA encryption (or WEP if this is not available).

Why dont a load of people in a street all chip in and
just use a communual connection,it makes sense and
would cost everyone peanuts..?

In essence that's what most ISPs give you with a domestic connection. They then divide up the bandwidth between x houses and you get what is called a 'contention ratio' for your service. A common one is 1:10 which means 10 people share the same local 'service'. Hence traffic is slower at different times of the day depending on other people using the shared service at the same time.

Commercial connections are much more expensive due to prohibitive SLAs and dedicated lines.

Stealing broadband is theft.
People stealing broadband often do it for fraudulant reasons and downloading illegal things.
If someone downloads kiddyporn sitting outside your house it will be traced to you ip.
Also newer routers show who is connected.
I wouldn't be ammused if i found someone nicking my broadband.
If you pay for sky would you be happy with people looking through your window to watch the footy?

But if i pay a tenner a month,and i allow me 10
neighbours to use my connection it would cost us a £1
each,or would i get massive slow down..?

If you all use it at different times then it would be fine. If you all used it at the same time it would be very slow.

Think of it as attaching 10 showers to 1 waste pipe and turning all the showers on at once. The waste would back up. The pipe is only so wide and sized accordingly.

Additionally, the ISP assigns you an IP address when you use the internet. This may be used to investigate you for downloading inappropriate material. If you let your neighbours use your internet connection and they do something dodgy / illegal it will be traced back to ............you.

That's why hackers use other people's connections to hide their tracks. Do you really trust Mr Bush at No12 and Mr Bin Laden at No13 that much :O?

But if i pay a tenner a month,and i allow me 10
neighbours to use my connection it would cost us a
£1
each,or would i get massive slow down..?

If you all use it at different times then it would be
fine. If you all used it at the same time it would be
very slow.

Think of it as attaching 10 showers to 1 waste pipe
and turning all the showers on at once. The waste
would back up. The pipe is only so wide and sized
accordingly.

Additionally, the ISP assigns you an IP
address when you use the internet. This may be used
to investigate you for downloading inappropriate
material. If you let your neighbours use your
internet connection and they do something dodgy /
illegal it will be traced back to ............you.

That's why hackers use other people's connections to
hide their tracks. Do you really trust Mr Bush at
No12 and Mr Bin Laden at No13 that much :O?

The problem with securing your network is that if someone does hack your secure network (and it can be quite easy) it makes it difficult for you to defend yourself against allegations of downloading dodgy material.

WEP security is incredibly easy to hack and mac filtering is equally easy to ovecome.

WPA is more difficult as long as you use secure keys.

I drove around my local estate about 2 years ago with a Wifi enabled PDA and found 12 unsecured networks within a half mile radius.

The problem with securing your network is that if
someone does hack your secure network (and it can be
quite easy) it makes it difficult for you to defend
yourself against allegations of downloading dodgy
material.

You can never remove all the risk - it's about minimising it. An appropriately secured wireless network will in all probability not be hacked as the hacker will move onto a weaker system to use as their cover. A hacker will always go for a system with the greatest attack surface. Are you suggesting that you shouldn't secure your network because if you do get hacked you will be more likely to be prosecuted for any dodgy activity? That would seem illogical to me.

WEP security is incredibly easy to hack and mac
filtering is equally easy to ovecome.

WPA is more difficult as long as you use secure
keys.agreed

I drove around my local estate about 2 years ago with
a Wifi enabled PDA and found 12 unsecured networks
within a half mile radius.

A determined, intelligent hacker, given enough time and sniffed data will more than likely break into a secure wireless network. However, we are not talking about your average man in the street here. If you want to simply stop Joe Blogs from stealing your bandwidth MAC filtering, SSID disablement and WPA are more than adequate.

The problem with securing your network is that if
someone does hack your secure network (and it can
be
quite easy) it makes it difficult for you to
defend
yourself against allegations of downloading dodgy
material.

You can never remove all the risk - it's about
minimising it. An appropriately secured wireless
network will in all probability not be hacked as the
hacker will move onto a weaker system to use as their
cover. A hacker will always go for a system with the
greatest attack surface. Are you suggesting that you
shouldn't secure your network because if you do get
hacked you will be more likely to be prosecuted for
any dodgy activity? That would seem illogical to
me.

WEP security is incredibly easy to hack and mac
filtering is equally easy to ovecome.

WPA is more difficult as long as you use secure
keys.agreed

I drove around my local estate about 2 years ago
with
a Wifi enabled PDA and found 12 unsecured networks
within a half mile radius.

A determined, intelligent hacker, given enough
time and sniffed data will more than likely break
into a secure wireless network. However, we are not
talking about your average man in the street here. If
you want to simply stop Joe Blogs from stealing your
bandwidth MAC filtering, SSID disablement and WPA are
more than adequate.

Oh and Best Wishes for a Merry Christmas Olly

Hi Andy and merry Christmas to you too!

No I'm not suggesting that you leave a wireless network unsecured, many people do but personnaly I have locked mine down quite tightly.

But it is true to say that if someone were to hack your network in order to download dodgy material it would be more difficult to disprove that it was you that did it.

In the early days of wireless networks people bought their own wireless routers which are generally insecure out of the box.

Nowdays many routers are supplied by ISPs and are already reasonably secure.

I hacked my neighbors as an experiment and even loaded new firmware on his router so I could up his signal strenth. (he was a mate and I told him I was doing it by the way) I have since secured it for him.

Some people used to leave their routers open and publish their addresses so anybody could use it as a hot spot!

Acca's idea re: sharing is actually quite viable if you know your neighbors well and keep routing logs so you know who has been on the dogy sites!

Acca's idea re: sharing is actually quite viable if
you know your neighbors well and keep routing logs so
you know who has been on the dogy sites!

Ah but wireless routers give out dynamic IPs via DHCP to their clients and these IPs are logged, not the MACs, so you would never know who has been where. You could assign them all static IPs of 192.168.0.x then you would know who has been where but it's a lot of admin for £1 /month, could you bothered? I know I couldn't.